


Yield to me

by betweenthetwo



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Trailer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21699220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenthetwo/pseuds/betweenthetwo
Summary: His ship approaches and even when he is just a speck on the horizon, she feels the Force Bond ignite, and she can see him.  His gloved hands, throttling the gears.  His face – metal mask missing, but masked all the same – is steel.She waits.She readies her body.//After Snoke, Rey waits.  Then she hears a word: Tatooine.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 6
Kudos: 96





	Yield to me

**Author's Note:**

> After the Supremacy, Rey returns home to the Resistance, but she is not the same.

_First, a day._

The communal air systems pause, hitch, go quiet.Her hand is on her saber before she blinks, her breath stuck in her chest.Her heart in her throat.She turns.

The systems whir; return to life.The silence is replaced by the normal hum of the ship, and she drops her hand.

Exhales.Closes her eyes.Inhales. 

* * * 

_Then, a week._

She’s skittish and the others feel it.She was excited to see them at first, of course, her friends, the family she has made for herself.But after the hugs and the laughter, when they tried to talk to her, she couldn’t.Something had taken root inside her, something cold and wary.Something lonely.Finn tried, she even thinks he may have tried to ask her out, but she brushed him away, subtly refocused him on Rose, and instead stood smiling sadly as they laughed and took tentative steps toward each other.She ate with them, and Poe and Connix.She took tea with General Organa.She repaired the Falcon with Chewie.But through it all – she felt like she was pretending to be herself.Like she had found a version of herself from several world’s ago, the Rey who left Jakku, the Rey who left the Alliance to travel to Ahch-To, and that was the version they wanted. 

But that isn’t who she is now. 

* * * 

_A month._

She trains alone, her staff cutting through the air, pushing herself further, faster, longer.Finn tries to talk to her; Leia regards her with something she does not want to think is sympathy. 

It doesn’t matter that she’s tired.It doesn’t matter that she feels faint if she pushes too hard, pushes through meals and into the night.It wouldn’t matter to him.He wouldn’t coddle her, bring her tea and portions, he wouldn’t beg her to sleep.As far as she can tell, from their months connected, he didn’t sleep much at all. 

She wonders if he’s sleeping better now, without Snoke. 

She swings the staff harder.Her lungs ache, her arms ache.Her heart --

* * * 

_A year._

The comms tell her nothing.The First Order has descended into chaos.General Hux has taken command of the Finalizer.There are whispers that the Knights of Ren are moving, gathering.

But no one knows where he is.Whether he is defeated, whether he is the one stirring the Knights, where he will go next. 

At night, alone, she lets herself imagine seeing him again.She lets herself remember the tremor in his voice, his dark eyes as he asked her – _please._ She meditates on that moment.Him, before her, hand extended, asking something of her, promising something to her.Never mind that she could not give it, she could not take it.It was there, for a moment.A moment when he offered her, needed her, pledged to her.Can she regret not doing something she could not even consider? 

She trains harder.She learns to leap, to bend herself around the force, to slow and speed her movements.She feels a power inside her now, a reserve.A potential she only glimpsed on Ahch-To.Her muscles are taut, like strings to a bow. 

Her body is ready to meet him again.The rest of her – her mind, or her heart, or her soul, whatever it is – has always been ready. 

Underneath her impatience it hums: fear.Of what he is.Of who she is.Of what he offers.Of what she has to do. 

* * * 

_Finally._

She waits, alone, in her fighter until feels him in the Force.He is allowing himself to be felt.For the first time since the throne room, she hears him.His voice is not kind.This is not a request, not a promise or a proposal.

**Tatooine.**

She isn’t afraid.The time for fear has passed.She is alone, has always been alone, and she finds now that he was wrong, it’s not her weakness, it’s her strength.She has lost as much as person can lose, some of it at his hands.She has gained more than she ever dreamed on Jakku.The Force, the Resistance, a purpose, a power.And she knows she can match him.She knows he knows it too. 

Kylo Ren would not offer the stars to anyone other than his equal in the Force. 

His ship approaches and even when he is just a speck on the horizon, she feels the Force Bond ignite, and she can see him.His gloved hands, throttling the gears.His face – metal mask missing, but masked all the same – is steel.

She waits.

She readies her body. 

He closes in.

Then, braced, she turns, runs with the speed her training has given her, runs like her life depends on it, and as his ship bears down on her, she vaults herself upward, over him, over his ship, landing behind him in the dust.

Through the Bond she feels his surprise, his admiration.She crouches as he turns his ship again toward her.

**_Face me yourself, Kylo Ren._ **

**No more Ben?**

**_No._ **

Instead of landing, she watches as he angles his TIE to her again, feels him thrust the controls to maximum.She smiles, exhales, runs, jumps again. 

**_I can do this all day_ , **her body sings through the Bond. There’s something on his end, something she’s caught glimpses of before: she thinks he might be amused, under all that rage.

He doesn’t respond, coming for her again, and this time, as she jumps, she reaches out with the Force and pulls his TIE towards her, feels his confusion and anger as his ship slows for a moment, his wonder as he hears her land on the roof.

**You’ve been training.**

**_I’ve been waiting._ **

Atop his ship, the desert winds whipping sand into her face, Rey feels more powerful and alive than she has since she last saw his face.

**_Face me.It’s time._ **

She feels the ship slow, settle, land.It costs her nothing to jump from it, to stand before the cockpit, to watch him through the glass.For a moment she wonders if he will start the engines again, mow her down where she stands.She isn’t worried – if he does, she will evade him. 

But – as he climbs out of his TIE fighter, as she sees for the first time in six months, his height, his strength.She feels for the first time, his power.And when he lifts his brown eyes to meet hers, his hair wilder, his clothes blacker somehow, she feels, in a wave she knows he is sending her, his rage.

“Scavenger,” he spits.“Nobody.”

“Murderer,” she responds, standing her ground as he approaches.“Monster.”

He’s close now, as close as he was in the throne room, but his hand isn’t extended, his eyes offer nothing, beg for nothing. 

“Jedi tricks won’t protect you,” he warns.

“I don’t need protection.”

“Arrogant orphan.Unwanted brat.”

She lets that sit between them for a moment, holds his eyes, lets him see and feel that his words don’t hurt her, sends him some of her strength and resolve. 

“I’m not the unwanted one,” she tells him, icy, slow.

His hand is on his saber before the hurt even registers in his eyes.Wordless, she shakes her head.She will not fight him now.Her hands remain at her side. She does not take a step back or move to evade him. 

He scoffs, lets his hand rest on his saber silt.

“Skywalker taught you well,” he mocks. 

“He taught me nothing,” she responds, affecting nonchalance.“I won’t fight you unless you force me.”

“Hasn’t the Resistance trained you to kill?” he asks, leaning forward and crowding her space for a moment. “Haven’t you killed countless of my men with your stunts?”

He is speaking of Coruscant.She won’t discuss that with him. 

“Your mother is alive,” she tells him, and watches his body absorb the blow.“You thought she died, didn’t you?She said she felt you in the Force before she saved herself.She said you felt sad.”

He says nothing.She sees his slow breathing, she pushes against the Bond.He gives her nothing.For the first time, since she left Hoth, she wonders what she is doing.Can she get through to him? 

“She doesn’t know I’m here,” she tells him, angling her head to try to meet his eyes that have drifted across the horizon over her left shoulder.“No one does.”

That gets his attention, and for a moment before he slams his walls back down, she feels him through the Bond.Feels his surprise. 

It emboldens her.It unleashes something in her.Her plan is out the window.She hadn’t thought it would feel like this to see him.She had forgotten, if she’s honest, how it felt to be this close to his power, to feel him in the Force and all around her.She had forgotten how dark his eyes are, how there is a mixture of frustration and wonder and _something else_ when he looks at her.How he can pin her with his eyes, but even more, how she can uproot him with hers.

For all the power she has found in the Force, it is nothing compared to the power she has here.

“You can kill me, if you want,” she tells him, stepping forward and reaching for her saber.He stiffens.She grasps the hilt, holds it out to him.He stares at her hand, her weapon.“You can kill me, or you can talk to me.If you kill me, not much will change.The galaxy will keep turning.The war will continue.It won’t change who wins or loses.A few people might be sad, but not many, and not for long.But if you talk to me, things might change.Something is coming.In the Force.I don’t know what it is, but it frightens me.It frightens me, but you don’t.So.Kill me, if that’s what came here to do.”

There is a beat that might last an eon.He doesn’t move. 

Then, it is like he has come to life. 

He meets her eyes as his gloved hand closes around her wrist.It’s the first time they’ve touched since the throne room, and her mouth opens involuntarily as she exhales, _feels_.His fingers encircle her wrist so easily.She can feel his power through the leather he wears. 

She came here sure that he would not kill her. 

“You’re a fool, Rey,” he says, quietly.His other hand reaches for his belt, for his saber, and her heart hammers, her mind races, _what has she done_ , until she feels, through the bond, him pushing something toward her: a promise.Safety.Something else.He unclips his saber, lets it drop to the ground.He moves his hand from her wrist, takes her saber from her hand and tosses it next to his own. 

She swallows.Watches, transfixed as he removes his gloves, slowly, one at a time. 

“If you died,” he says, and she feels how his breath hitches over the thought, feels him open his mind to her, feels the chasm that the thought of her hurt or suffering or dying creates inside him, “if you died, Rey, I would destroy the universe.I wouldn’t even have to try.”

Her mind swirls.She doesn’t know if she is still breathing.His hand – ungloved – is inches from her own, he’s not reaching for her but holding his hands so close to hers that she can feel the air between them pulsing, can feel the Force pulling and pushing.

“I would rip this planet apart.Every planet.The stars would bleed.Do you understand?Can you understand that I wouldn’t even _think_ about it, that if you were gone there wouldn’t be any thinking to do, that everything, _everything_ would end?”

He’s breathing faster, and she can tell he didn’t mean to tell her that, she can see he has surprised himself.And Rey?Rey isn’t sure she is still standing.If someone told her she was levitating, she would believe it.If someone told her she was twenty thousand feet under the sea, she would believe it. 

Neither of them moves.Their fingers are inches apart.Rey flexes hers, closes the gap a little but not all the way, and watches in wonder as his face shines, his chest heaves, his energy ripples around her. 

She is in hyperspace.She is underground.She is standing in the rain, in the snow, in a desert, in the sky.This is what he meant, in the throne room.This is what he offered her, and she was too blind, too righteous…

“Do you understand, Rey?” he repeats.She swallows.He bites his lip.She keens, and in that moment, she realizes that she is a fool.The choice was never to die or to talk. 

She doesn’t know who moves first, but in an instant his mouth is on hers, her hands are in his hair, his arms are around her and now she knows she isn’t standing because he lifts her off the ground, pulls her towards him fiercely and reverently and her tongue is tracing his lips and their noses are bumping and the _Force…_

* * * 

In orbit above them, hidden from view, the Rebel ship that followed Rey here without her knowledge lurches. 

“What in kriff was that?” Poe Dameron demands, striding into the cockpit. 

Leia Organa smiles.

“Let’s get back to the others,” she says, calmly, taking her seat.

“But General, Rey is still down there! _He_ is still down there! We can’t just—”

“Poe I’ve demoted you how many times for insubordination?Just listen to me for once, will you?”

“But—”

Leia shakes her head.If ever a man took after her late husband, it’s Poe Dameron. 

“Look,” she tells him, pointing to Tatooine, far beneath them.“And listen.”Reluctant, her Captain directs his attention to the planet below and gasps.There is light, everywhere.The atmosphere shines, gold.And he swears he can hear…

“What is that?”

“It’s the Force,” Leia tells him, softly, seemingly lost in thought.“It is balanced.” 

* * * 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
